“True Love” (Last Part)

2) FINDING TRUE LOVE CAN BE DIFFICULT:

The Bible has a remarkable story about a woman named Leah, who discovered that finding true love was difficult (Genesis 29:21-35; 30:1-21). Leah was caught up in a struggle to earn her husband’s love. Three sons later, she was still clinging to the hope that one day, he would wake up and start to appreciate her. She kept waiting and waiting. Eventually, Leah gave birth to another son, her fourth. Leah named him Judah and announced “Now I will praise God.” Judah’s name means something special. It means to praise or be thankful to God. But how could she praise God when her outward circumstances had not changed? (WHY?)

With the birth of her fourth son, Leah had a life altering realization. She realized that while her husband refused to love her, God was present in her life! God had noticed every pain, every sorrow, every moment of rejection she had ever experienced and He was pouring blessings into her life (Genesis 29:31). God loved her unconditionally!

Leah did not realize it at the time, but Leah, and her son Judah, were ancestors of a man named Jesus. This is the Jesus, whom Christians worship and who the entire Bible anticipated. It is a fitting end to the love story because no one would ever offer greater hope and love than God.

It’s difficult to find true love from another person like us because we are all too self-interested. Our hearts are bent toward protecting and promoting ourselves. It is not hard to see! We live in a culture that constantly measures the success of every relationship by what we get out of it. We stay married only as long as it is benefitting to us, not really thinking about the other partner. We are more into finding true love from the other person. We are only after our own protection and security and rarely takes into consideration the security and protection of the other person.

Honestly, TRUE LOVE has never really been about romance or passion; it is about truth and value. It is about vulnerability and acceptance. It is about wholeness and finding peace. It is about discovering a foundation on which we can build our lives and on which we can place our hope and confidence. It is about feeling we are worth something. It is about sharing vulnerability and in the midst of it, feeling loved unconditionally. Beside this, we have fake love which fades away in no time leaving us broken and terribly hurt. If the end is seperation and hurt, why even go into it or continue with it?

Adam and Eve were the first to enjoy True Love. If you are familiar with the Bible story of the first sin, you will remember it involved a simple proposition; “Eve, if you will eat of this fruit, YOU will be like GOD.” It is strange that the serpent did not use the delicious looks of the fruit to tempt Eve. Instead, the serpent offered Eve a thought about herself. Eve asked herself a question she never wondered before, “what’s in it for me?”. This moment of self-discovery came with massive consequences. This act of disobedience led Adam and Eve to the startling realization that they had been naked this whole time. For the first time, they felt vulnerable and ashamed. They made clothes to cover and protect themselves.

God discussed their disobedience with them, because He knew that all of their relationships were falling apart as a result of their self-interest. Eve blamed the serpent for tempting her. Adam blamed Eve for giving him the fruit and then even went so far as to blame God for giving him Eve in the first place! (Genesis 2:18-23). Neither one wanted to take the blame but was concerned only for their self-interest.

The consequences for disobeying God were the loss of true-love relationships. Adam and Eve would never be allowed back into the perfect garden world. They lost everything. We know their new world of self-interest and self-protection, because we carry with us the same sin-bent reality. We long for real love because we were created from/with love, to love and be loved unconditionally. This is probably the most important point in this entire article:

“You will never find or experience the true love you seek in this world alone. Each of us and the world around us is too soaked in sin. The great news is that there is One who is the very definition of Love and you can be in a relationship with Him! (GOD).

Text Widget

This is a text widget. The Text Widget allows you to add text or HTML to your sidebar. You can use a text widget to display text, links, images, HTML, or a combination of these. Edit them in the Widget section of the Customizer.